Return to Me
by s1ncer1ty
Summary: After months apart, Wufei returns to help ease Duo's nightmares. 5x2, shounen-ai.


Return to Me 

Title: Return to Me  
Author: s1ncer1ty  
Pairing: 5x2  
Rating: PG  
Warnings: Slightly angsty, a little supernatural. Flamers will face Nataku's very large flamethrower.  
Disclaimer: You know the drill. The story's mine, but the series ain't! (sadly)

_---  
I will be watching over you   
I am gonna help you see it through   
I will protect you in the night   
I am smiling next to you in silent lucidity   
~~ Queensryche, 'Silent Lucidity'  
---_

The compound is utterly quiet, almost deathly so. Although I am the only being still awake at this midnight hour, my feet make no sound as I slowly make my way down the hallway of the floating space headquarters. The darkness of the corridor does not bother me -- I am accustomed to knowing shadow and surroundings well. I pass the quarters of each pilot in turn, unable to see past the heavy steel doors but knowing that beyond each is a young boy, nearly on the verge of manhood, deep in the throes of sleep.

All but you. As I pause beside your door, the last one on the right before the corridor turns sharply, I hear a quiet whimpering coming from the other side of secure steel. I remember your passcode easily, but I don't need it to push past the heavy door into sloppy quarters that have only gotten messier over the past two months that I have been away. Discarded clothes, random pieces of dismantled machinery, several books and musical datadisks litter the floor like an obstacle course. I step around them out of respect.

You lie fast asleep and dreaming, cocooned within a tremendous tangle of sheets and blankets, the fabric coiled around you like a snake. Lying on your back, your hands are clenched to your braid, which has looped its way around your throat. Although it hangs loosely, you struggle to breathe, fingers weakly clawing at the mass of hair. I rest my left hand upon one of yours and with the other, I slide the errant braid from around your neck, smoothing it gently beside you. Immediately, you draw in a satisfied gasp and turn onto your side, shifting as the blankets tighten around your limbs.

It rarely ends there, I've discovered, in the time it's taken me to get to know you. Once triggered, your fears of suffocation, brought on by childhood bouts of bronchitis and exacerbated by our time spent in an airless Oz holding cell, do not release their hold easily. Taking great care not to wake you, I gingerly slip the tangled sheets from around your arms and straighten them across your slumbering body, hoping that easing the constriction will help delay another bout of nightmares. For the time being, you are content, and you sleep in peace. I sink into the chair beside your desk, atop a thin pile of papers that I do not bother to move, and I wait to see if the episode will be the last one of the evening.

Patience, diligence. Over an hour passes, broken only by the soft noise of your deep breathing, before you suddenly twitch in your sleep. Even at rest, your imagination is as overly active as it is when you are awake -- the only difference is that you cannot hide behind a facade of laughter while you are asleep. I watch as your brow furrows and your features tighten, the pain brought forth in a dream I can never know rising to the surface. You begin to whimper again, a pained noise that at the same time distresses and incenses me, and I silently climb to my feet. My fingers gently brush the tangled mop of bangs from your forehead, and you relax at my touch. Your eyelids flutter momentarily, but they do not open.

"'Fei?" you murmur thickly, imploringly. "Wu Fei?"

"I am here, Maxwell," is my very softly whispered reply.

"Don't leave me again," you state, your voice alarmingly pleading in tone. It is merely sleep-talk; I know that you're not completely lucid.

Involuntarily, I recall the last time I left you, after my battle with Treize Khushrenada, amid the volley of mobile suit fire from enemy forces. I left, and I did not return. Not for the longest time. Not until recently did I have the strength to return to you, and I do not know how long this strength can hold out. "Maxwell, I cannot promise that."

I withdraw my hand from the soft skin of your forehead, and your expression tightens further, troubled. Another soft, pained whimper escapes you, and you whisper, "At least hold me, 'Fei? Just for tonight?"

Like I used to do, before that final battle, when your dreams and fears would overwhelm your subconscious, I climb onto your bed beside you. Although I do not join you beneath the covers, not requiring the warmth they bring, I still encircle your body against mine. My legs nestle against the backs of your knees, my chin settling upon your shoulder and my arm looping around your waist. Your fingers twine with mine, and I content myself with merely feeling the rise and fall of your chest against mine. You fall silent, but for the sound of your breath, and your dreams are peaceful while you are in my arms. 

I want to stay with you the entire time you sleep, to make up for the time we have spent apart. Though merely months in duration, it seems aeons to me. Yet as the clock ticks close to 5:00 a.m., and the room's artificial lighting steadily begins to brighten in simulation of sunrise, I know that I've nearly overstayed my welcome. With a feeling akin to regret weighing upon my heart, I press a gentle, whispering kiss to your cheek and I extract myself from your arms. Fitfully, you shift onto your back as I leave the bed and your warmth.

Long ago, you once told me that one must never, ever look back. You cited a tale from the Christian Bible about a woman looking back upon a burning city and was subsequently turned into a pillar of salt. Despite my better judgment and your past warnings, I turn back to gaze at you once I reach the door. Your eyes are wide open, staring directly at me in shock -- yet they are also glazed with the sheen of the sleepwalker.

"Wu Fei?" you murmur in disbelief. 

My chest is too tight to speak; I can only give you a slow nod.

"But ... 'Fei, you're dead."

I do not deny it, my thoughts lingering, as they often do, upon the final volley of mobile suit fire that detonated Nataku and tore me shrieking from your life. Again, I can merely nod. You deserve the truth, as much truth as can be managed from the ambiguous world of the deceased.

"Then how are you --" Your expression is anxious, your wide, glazed violet eyes welling with sorrow and disbelief. 

"You are dreaming, Maxwell," I state softly. It is not the complete truth, but I could never reveal such a thing to you. Despite your claims to be Shinigami, you would never truly understand. Not until you join me. "Please, go back to sleep."

You close your eyes again and shift several times before finding a temporarily comfortable position. As fitful sleep overcomes you, I hear a plaintive whisper escape your throat: "Will I ever see you again, Wu Fei?"

"Yes," I reply in a quiet, honest voice. "You will." I make no guarantees of when, or in what form you will again find me. If I can will the strength once again, I will visit you. Death can not separate us forever.

With a heavy heart, I glide through the steel door that would normally have been impenetrable, and I move into the corridor where the faint stirrings of the other pilots can be heard as they begin their day. 

Wait for me, Duo. In the delicate realm that exists between sleep and consciousness, you will always find me.  
  



End file.
